MTV looks at opposing views of uranium

CROWNPOINT, March 13, 2008

One of MTV's 51 nationwide citizen journalists traveled to Crownpoint Feb. 28 to get the scoop on proposed uranium mining in the community.

Christine Begay, Nakota/Arikara/Navajo, traveled from Albuquerque with her compact digital camera and a two-member camera crew in hopes of talking to people on all sides of the issue.

Begay, 23, said her attempts to set up an interview in advance with the proposed developer, Uranium Resources Inc. of Lewisville, Texas, were unsuccessful.

Not so with adversaries of the mining, which included a sampling of local students and local activists.

URI has been working since 1994 to establish the Crownpoint Uranium Solution Mining Project, which would include four in-situ leach mines and a regional uranium processing plant.

It is one of at least half a dozen companies seeking to resume uranium development in New Mexico, site of the world's richest known deposits.

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Dressed casually in blue jeans and a black T-shirt, Begay interviewed Leona Morgan, director of the Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining, a non-profit group headquartered in Crownpoint.

ENDAUM has been fighting to derail the project and is supported by other anti-uranium groups, including the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque.

Morgan brought Begay up to date on ENDAUM's efforts to block the mining license issued by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which led the commission to include requirements that the mining company accept financial responsibility for groundwater cleanup after mining ends.

URI estimates that could cost $8 million (the environmentalists think it's more likely to be around $20 million).

Begay did eventually get the company to talk to her by visiting its office in Crownpoint. She interviewed Ben House, URI community liaison, and learned why some Navajos in the area support the mining plan.

House, who is president of the Eastern Navajo Allottee Association, is among the owners of allotted land who have signed leases with the company.

He contends that critics are too quick to point at uranium as the cause of sickness among area residents, instead of looking at diabetes or alcoholism.

House said the opponents exploit problems from past uranium mining in scare tactics that are designed to stop people from learning about how safe uranium mining has become.

An estimated 100 abandoned mines and waste dumps litter the communities of Mariano Lake, Pinedale and Smith Lake. They are the leftovers of mining booms that began in the 1950s and occurred off and on until the early '80s.

Even after federal environmental laws were passed to clean up past pollution and improve controls, problems occurred.

In 1979, a tailings dam failed at the United Nuclear Corp. uranium mill in Church Rock Chapter. Over 94 million gallons of radioactive tailings and water flooded the area and flowed down the Rio Puerco, which runs through Gallup and empties into the Little Colorado River.

House, a former council delegate who lives near Crownpoint, said URI's mining process, in-situ leach extraction, is completely different from former methods.

The company drills holes, injects an acid solution, and extracts it. The acid leaches the uranium from the surrounding rock and it is later separated from the solution and dried out as a powder called "yellowcake."

The solution is then re-used in a - hopefully - closed loop. House said URI has been using in-situ leach extraction for several years in Texas, and that it has proven to be safe.

In 2005 the Navajo Nation adopted a ban on uranium mining, which House said led to an executive order from President Joe Shirley Jr. directing tribal employees not to talk to him and other uranium company representatives.

"I'm willing to sit down with the Navajo leadership but Joe Shirley's not willing," House said. "I go to his office and his office is closed to me. We go to Window Rock and people run from you. The (Crownpoint) chapter keeps us out too. They need to be open-minded."

He said if the tribe can prove that uranium mining is bad, then there shouldn't be any.

"But," House added, "if it's good then let's mine."

He emphasized that Crownpoint could use the hundreds of new jobs and millions of dollars that would come from a new wave of uranium mining.

House pointed towards the community's flea market and said local people are in such dire financial straits that they sell their clothes and other household items.

Gerges Scott, URI public information officer, said the Crownpoint area has about a million pounds of uranium.

Yellowcake currently sells for between $63 and $80 a pound, compared to 1990, when the price bottomed out at $9 a pound.

He said Navajo allottees who have leased their land to the company would be paid a 10 percent royalty per pound of uranium recovered.

Scott noted, "New Mexico is to uranium as Saudi Arabia is to oil."

The phrase became the title of Begay's video report, which is posted on her Web site, http://think.mtv.com/cmbegayNM.

Begay said the interviews she did with young people, community members, and URI officials taught her more about the legacy of uranium on the Navajo Reservation than she learned from research and reading news stories.

"I didn't know, and now I know," she said.